A network is a collection of links and nodes (e.g., multiple computers and/or other devices connected together) arranged so that information may be passed from one part of the network to another over multiple links and through various nodes. Examples of networks include the Internet, the public switched telephone network, the global Telex network, computer networks (e.g., an intranet, an extranet, a local-area network, or a wide-area network), wired networks, and wireless networks.
The Internet, one of the best known networks, is a worldwide network of computers and computer networks arranged to allow the easy and robust exchange of information between computer users. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have access to computers connected to the Internet via Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Content providers place multimedia information (e.g., text, graphics, audio, video, animation, and other forms of data) at specific locations on the Internet referred to as websites. The combination of all the websites and their corresponding web pages on the Internet is generally known as the World Wide Web (WWW) or simply the Web.
Web sites allow individuals and businesses to share their information with a large number of Internet users. Many products and services are offered for sale on the Internet, thus elevating the Internet to an essential tool of commerce. Web sites created by Internet businesses may be reached by millions of Internet-savvy customers, thereby allowing Internet businesses to offer their products and services to a very large pool of potential customers.
To assist Internet businesses in operating their Web sites, many companies offer hosting services for Web sites. These hosting companies typically provide the hardware, software and electronic communication means necessary to connect multiple Internet businesses' Web sites to the Internet. A single hosting company may literally host thousands of Web sites. A computer or server may host one or more Web sites.
An unfortunate consequence of the Internet's growth is the accompanying growth of fraud on the Internet. The Internet was originally designed with the academic and scientific communities in mind, and it was assumed that users of the network would be working in a non-adversarial, cooperative manner. The TCP/IP protocols underlying the Internet were not originally designed to provide secure data transmission. Increasing use and transmittal of confidential information over the Internet demanded improved security measures for communications over the Internet.
A common method for Internet businesses to protect their Customers from fraud is to obtain an SSL (or its more recent counterpart Transport Layer Security (TLS)) Certificate for their Web sites. SSL includes a protocol for transmitting private documents via the Internet by using a private key to encrypt data transferred over an SSL connection. An SSL certificate on a Web site lets Customers know that the owner of the Web site has been verified by a trusted third party (Certificate Authority or CA) and that confidential communications with the Web site are encrypted.
The certificate (such as an X.509 certificate) typically includes an identification of the server (such as its hostname), the server's public key, and a digital signature provided by the well known CA. The digital signature is used by a client receiving the certificate from a server to authenticate the identity of the server before initiating a secured session. In particular, the application on the client initiating the secured communication session, such as an Internet browser, is typically installed with a public key ring including public keys for various well known CAs that allow the client to verify server certificates issued by these CAs. Common conventional browsers, such as NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR and INTERNET EXPLORER, support the SSL protocol, and many Web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information from their Customers. By convention, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that require an SSL connection start with “https:” instead of “http:”.